Military needs sex workers to 'relieve' soldiers: Army captain

SEX workers should be sent to the front line to ­"service'' Australia's combat soldiers and help them relieve stress.

That is the opinion of a female Australian Army Captain who is currently on deployment in the Middle East. Captain Sally Williamson made the suggestion on an official Australian Army website.

She also wrote that if the front line was too dangerous for prostitutes, troops could be given sex toys instead.

Her article "Sex And War - A Conversation Army Has To Have" was posted earlier this month on the Army's official Land Power Forum blog and removed several days later. It said chiefs were too "nervous" to talk about sex in the wake of a string of military sexual scandals.

Captain Williamson wondered "whether the Army could contract Australian male and female sex workers to service troops in forward operating bases and air bases."

These would be the same as the official Field Mobile Brothels the French military deployed around the airfields of Dien Bien Phu during the French Indochina War in 1954. However, she found there were "moral, legal, practical, medical and logistical barriers" to putting sex workers in the line of fire.

If the front line was considered too dangerous for sex workers, then sex toys could be offered instead.

Instead, she urged Army chiefs to loosen the rules on fraternisation to allow willing soldiers on the front line to "have sexual relations in a safe, secure and controlled environment".

"Another option the ADF could consider is facilitating safe and regulated sexual satisfaction through other means such as providing masturbation facilities or issuing sex toys," she said.

She said sex helped relieve the stress of "loneliness or prolonged absence from family, friends, partners and spouses" and the exposure to bombs and killing that came from deployment in a war zone, adding: "Improved intimacy and sexual interaction can help combat veterans with PTSD recovery."

However, if none of that worked, Captain Williamson suggested that the Army "should be stricter in enforcing abstinence".

Captain Williamson's sex plan was met with criticism from several quarters.

Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans Association NSW President Bruce Relph said: "If a soldier is going to war or on a ­peacekeeping operation they need to keep sex out of the picture."

Former Army officer and Australian Conservatives member Bernie Gaynor said: "I can't believe that an officer wrote this article in the first place. It is even harder to comprehend how it was allowed to be published.

"Five years after ... the 'Skype' sex scandal we now see the Army calling for a discussion on taxpayer-funded prostitution and open fraternisation. What a disaster.''